CEC Palace
Paul Gottereau · Bucharest, Romania · 1900
Paul Gottereau’s CEC Palace gives a banking institution the ceremonial character of a Beaux-Arts civic monument. A large glass-and-metal dome rises above the central banking hall, while corner domes, paired columns and sculpted pediments create a highly symmetrical façade on Calea Victoriei. Completed in 1900 for Romania’s national savings institution, the building combines French academic architectural language with a program tied to the modernization of financial infrastructure. Its prominent corner site and richly modeled roofline make it one of the most recognizable works of Bucharest’s turn-of-the-century urban transformation.